Lloyd Kahn is the editor-in-chiefof Shelter Publications, an independent California publisher.Shelter Publications specializes in books on buildingand architecture,as well as health and fitness.Lloyds latest book is Small Homes: The Right Size.For more info, see: www.shelterpub.comLloyd Kahn is the editor-in-chief of Shelter Publications, an independent California publisher. Shelter Publications specializes in books on building and architecture, as well as health and fitness. Lloyd’s latest book is Small Homes: The Right Size.For more info, see: www.shelterpub.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/lloydkahn

Lew "dug up" this great website, with many photos, showing turf houses of the Viking era in different parts of the world.

"The Þjóðveldisbær longhouse (located in Þjórsárdalur) is a re-creation of a typical Icelandic turf house from the end of the Norse era and is based on the house at Stöng, a short distance away that was covered with ash during a volcanic eruption of Hekla in 1104. As a result, the ruins were better preserved, with more physical evidence extant, than other Norse era longhouses.…
The Stöng farm was large and rich, and after the eruption, it may not have been abandoned completely until the climate changes that occurred in the 13th century. During its prosperous years, perhaps twenty or more people lived in this longhouse.…"http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/daily_living/text/Turf_Houses.htm

My training for the Dipsea race in June got rudely interrupted when I stumbled and injured some hamstring muscles out on the trail last Saturday. 6 weeks until the race and now I'm waiting and watching (feeling) for muscles to heal so I can get back to training before it's too late. For competitive runners, 'twas ever thus…
Coincidentally Lesley gave me a CD yesterday of fiddler Johnny Kimble (recently interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR) and one of the songs has these witty lyrics:

What do you dowhen you just cain't dowhat you didwhen you didwhat you did?

When you opened your eyesand finally realizedyou ain't no longer a kid.

A few weeks ago I stopped by my mom's rest home. About 15 elderly ladies were sitting around listening to another elderly lady play the piano. She was terrific. Five Foot two, Ain't She Sweet, Bye-bye Blues — the '20s and '30s songs we used to play in high school, accompanied by ukulele and washtub bass.
I called Phoebe and asked her if she'd be interested in having me and my box bass and my brother Bob and his banjo sit in with her. Sure, she said. Well, yesterday Bob and I showed up and I gotta say we clicked. Everybody was happy. My mom was moving her hands and feet in rhythm to the music. One of the ladies, Jane, knows the words to just about every song, and she sang along with me. I ended up with a blister on my string-plucking finger. Towards the end of the session, Bob got his banjo going, and the joint was rockin'. Two of the caregivers were dancing. At the end of the song, Phoebe said, "One more time, boys!" It was so much fun!
Phoebe is 91 years old, born in 1918. She has 18 gigs a month at a rest home-type places, and since she no longer drives, she takes whistle-stop wheels buses to get around the county. We're going to play with her again in a couple of weeks and we'll shoot a video.Five foot two,eyes of blue,but oh what those 5 foot can do,has anybody seen my gal?

Today's my birthday, also a full moon (whoo-whoo!). I was going to skate on the mountain at sunrise, but it was cloudy, so I decided to go to a rocky grotto on a nearby beach. I got up at 4:15, made my way down the "not-for-the-faint-hearted" trail, real steep in spots, It'd been raining and I soon learned that Vibram soles are slippery on wet rocks. Got down to the grotto as the full moon was going down on the western horizon. Rain drops falling. A swell had come up overnight and the waves were powerful and crashing. Vortex of energy! I hung out for maybe 20 minutes, then started back up the cliff. Partway up, I looked down at the beach in time to see a big flock of pelicans fly inches above a breaking wave. They use the wave's updraft and hardly flap their wings. From my vantage point I could see them doing this beautiful dance, skimming above one wave, then when it broke, switching to a new, yet unbroken wave.

Loaded Boards makes longboards with bamboo decks.Here's a video of three crazy guys skating through Peru and Bolivia:
"In January, 2009, Adam Colton set off with Paul Kent and Aaron Enevoldsen to conquer the Andes with only longboards and backpacks. Mike Hager supplied the video equipment to document them skating over 1500 miles through some of the toughest terrain on the planet. This is their first release showing amazing scenery, character, native Peruvians, and downhilling with 30lb backpacks!"

Per a posting today from Cooltools, you can get a Sears tool catalog for free:

"On a recent trip to Sears, I was happily surprised to see a thick catalog near the checkout. I hadn't realized the Sears Tool Catalog is still in print, still available for free, and just about as big as the old Radio Shack catalogs I used to get.
It’s not just Craftsman tools in here. They have all of your professional brands inside, and some wicked tools you can’t find at a brick-and-mortar Sears. Woodworking tools are well-represented. Mechanics tools are, too, as you’d expect, including SK tools and some small specialty brands; also shop equipment, even some boots and clothing. Sears has also recently made major upgrades to what it's calling its interactive catalog.
-- Christopher Wanko"

Greta Guzek is a painter who went to art school in South Africa. I discovered her on the excellent blog from a kindred spirit in British Columbia, "runningfreeonwildershores."
Greta says:
"Having lived on the west coast for twenty years I feel an integration with its character, and it has become a vehicle for my artistic expression.

I believe that through the familiar sketches of life, I create a bond with viewers which allows me to converse with them on an aesthetic level. I paint in a way to express my involvement with the subject. [For example], I simplify it, distort the forms and perspectives, enhance the expressive value of colour and create a rhythm that animates the scene.

Email we received this week:
Lloyd,
I enjoy your blog and am so excited that you're putting together a new book on tiny houses (Apr 12 post)! When I saw the mention of chicken coops, I remembered the photo I took at my Aunt & Uncle's farm out in South Dakota.…I believe this was actually a brooding house; it had not been used in years, and when I walked inside, sunlight streamed in through the windows…It was beautiful, and I thought such a unique structure for chickens! I badly wanted to have it sent home to Michigan for my own hens. Alas, I settled for the photo and memory.

You probably have enough photos, but thought I'd send this along anyway. And I wanted to Thank You for your amazing books. I just got Builders of the Pacific Coast about a month ago (Home Work is still my fave tho). I love looking at the photos and am so amazed at the creativity and ingenious designs. Totally inspiring. In 2006, my husband and I bought some land near Mora, NM, and we plan to retire early in the next few years and build our own small home (off the grid). Your books have given us ideas and inspiration to get creative and incorporate our own unique hand-made designs.…
Caroline Breslin
Cass County, Michigan(This will go in our tiny house book.-LK)

I met my friend Louie at Nick's cove, a bayside inn in Marshall on Tomales Bay yesterday. This old dinghy was on display inside. After lunch we drove around looking for a place for Louie to berth his 26' long sailboat, a "Crotch Island Pinky" that he and his friend Pete built over a 10-year period. It's now in the Noyo Harbor just south of Ft. Bragg, Calif. Louie may move it down to Bodega Bay, which is great by me because it's a lot closer for me to go sailing (and fishing) with him. (Louie is the featured builder in Home Work.)

"Inside the casemates at Fort Pulaski. In this area, the floorboards were burned away many years ago so they left it open so you could see the engineering of the structure. This foundation supported tons of earth and artillery on the terreplein above. I think it looks like an old subway tunnel."Photo by Kappasigmapi: http://www.pbase.com/kappasigmapi/image/47008245
From Wikipedia:
"Fort Pulaski National Monument is located between Savannah and Tybee Island, Georgia. It preserves Fort Pulaski, notable as the place where, during the American Civil War, in 1862, the Union Army successfully tested a rifled cannon. The success of the test rendered brick fortifications obsolete. The fort was also used as a prisoner-of-war camp.…"

Both tower in background and pumphouse on right have new roofs with shakes split by Bruno Atkey from British Columbia. Billy Cummings did the tower shakes solo, since I'd had a carpal tunnel operation. That's the production studio on the left.

I thought this comment from Steve Lamm on my posting of yesterday (4/20/10) was interesting enough to bring up front. It's feedback on my observations of birds flying in unison. Here's an excerpt from an NPR program by Nell Greenfield Boyce:
"For any given pair of birds, Biro says, "you can accurately work out which of them is the leader and which one of them is the follower."
Some birds had more followers than others. This demonstrates a hierarchy of influence within the flock. "You can actually rank birds in terms of the influence that they have on others within the group," Biro says. "Basically every individual gets a kind of a vote in what the flock does, but the weight of your vote depends on your rank, your position in the hierarchy."
And it did turn out that highly influential birds tended to fly out in front, according to a report on the study in the journal Nature.…"http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125665334Photo of common terns in flight by Max Skwarna: http://is.gd/bCqT9
Look at those aerodynamics!

I'm back in a running groove for the first time in 8 or so years. It's taken about 5 months, 3 times a week, to slowly get the machinery working and circuits and plumbing opened up. I can cruise, I can run 8-9 miles, and the mountain has never been more beautiful than right now. My tempestuous affair with running is on an upswing. It's good to be on the trails again.
Yesterday I took my Joe Bark racing paddleboard out in the lagoon. At certain tides, there is a winding 1- or 2-mile long channel that I paddle through. It's 20-30 feet wide, mud bottom, pickleweed growing on mudflats, birds abundant. It was a quiet day, overcsst, kind of warm, and the water was glassy like a mirror, but with bits of foam from the incoming tide. I'd paddle hard for a while, and there'd be a spray about a foot long on either side of the nose, like a slow speedboat. This thing skims across the water. I crept up on a beautiful egret. A few days before I'd been watching a flock of terns on a mudflat when two of them took off and flew together in perfect unison, diving, climbing, soaring, an aerial dance, the pair joyous with synchronization…how do they know to both take a right turn at exactly the same moment? In the book Star Maker, Olaf Stapledon described starlings or some such birds in a huge flock, and how they all turned at the same time as if the group were a collective intelligence…Above photo, taken 10 minutes ago, of divider strip on Columbus Street, outside Cafe Roma, North Beach, San Francisco

On a side street off the main drag in Novato, California (on a rainy Saturday). A brass plaque on the building says:Novato's first railroad station
Constructed in 1875. Moved here from original site and restored to depict first structure relating to railroad transportation linking Marin and Northern counties Dedicated April 22, 1989

Wild food last week: puffball mushroom sauteed with roadkill venison, and miner's lettuce in the salad. Today (Sunday) was a drop-dead gorgeous California blue-sky day. We were here totally alone, no one came by, the office closed, not even a phone call. Lesley worked in the garden all day. I started getting the chicken coop ready for the 30 baby chicks that will arrive from Murray McMurray in the mail on May 10th (all bantams -- Auracanas and Gold and Silver Sebrings). I worked on a bunch of things in my shop: fixing the radial arm saw bench, sorting out the lumber piles, getting ready to go eeling tomorrow.

Jesse Ventura was a guest on the Bill Maher show on Friday. He said the Catholic church should be arraigned in the US, just the same as the Mafia, for organized crime. They have been responsible for felonies (molestation) and have not only covered them up, but kept the offending criminals in their organization. By the way, why should churches get a tax exemption? It was a great episode, the 3 guests were all on the same page. There was no Republican asshole to "balance" things out.

Mt.Tamalpais is stylin' right now. The creeks are full and rushing, wildflowers are out, the hills are green, the plants are happy with the rains, and there's even more rain predicted in the next few days. With the lakes full and the creeks bursting with life, I feel rich. Like money in the bank. No, better.

In the world I grew up in (grad. high school 52, college 57), communication was by phone and letter. I was comfortable with that. It never occurred to me it would change. When the fax machine came along, I was stunned. How could text and even drawings be sent over a phone line? Well, look where we're at now. I don't remember when I last wrote a (non e-mail) letter.

And in publishing books, we used to prepare "mechanicals" (text and graphics) — large paper sheets and take them into the printers to be photographed for film, which was used to prepare aluminum plates for the press. Then the Macintosh came along, and all that changed. We adapted. In fact, the film for our 1973 book Shelter is now being scanned and converted to digital files, since printing plants are ceasing film-based printing.
Now, we're apparently headed for a sea of change in the publishing industry. I haven't studied it extensively, since I barely have enough time to work on book projects as is, but I'm keenly interested in what's now going on out in the publishosphere..
For some reason, I feel a bit like the South Pacific natives in the last scene of Mondo Cane (1962 documentary) who thought that cargo planes were gods (I refer to the clueless, not reverential aspect of this scenario).
Our books are distributed by Publishers Group West, who in turn are owned by Perseus Books Group. Perseus has just set up a facility called Constellation to assist their client/publishers in navigating the digital world ("towards a digital strategy"). I went to a Constellation seminar in Berkeley a few days ago, and here are a few random facts I picked up:
-If you believe the media, the publishing world is in a state of turmoil. "Desperate," "losing control," "downward trend," "bleak future…" Yeah, well maybe — maybe — things aren't quite so desperate. Our bookstore sales have actually gone up this year. Books ain't dead. "The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." -Mark Twain
-There were 140,000 self published titles in 2009. This is incredible. Power to the individual.
-There are way more e-book devices than I realized. At Book Expo America in New York in May, Perseus will have 18 devices on display. Different features, different formats, different requirements. It's dizzying. The iPad has got competition.
-We have some out-of-print books that we are now resuscitating with Print-on-demand and short run printing. Like Mrs. Restino's Country Kitchen, our 1996 book about cooking from your garden, which was ahead of its time, orour 1983 book Aerobic Tennis, about using tennis to get in shape. Some of our old books are seeing the light of day once again.
-Right now, e-book sales are handled by Amazon, Sony, eBrary, Overdrive, e-books.com, Follet, Ingram e-books, BN e-books, and Kobo (Shortliners). Phew!
-I've been reading the New York Times on the web about every day. The other day when I went to Berkeley, I picked up a copy of the paper, and boy, what a difference!
We'll keep publishing "hard copy" books forever. We're also starting work on converting some of our books to e-books.
It's an exciting time for communicators.

The Lone Ranger and Tonto went camping in the desert. After they got their tent all set up, both men fell sound asleep. Some hours later, Tonto wakes the Lone Ranger and says, "Kemo Sabe, look towards sky, what you see? "'The Lone Ranger replies, 'I see millions of stars.'

"What that tell you?" asked Tonto.

The Lone Ranger ponders for a minute then says, "Astronomically speaking, it tells me there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, it tells me that Saturn is in Leo. Time wise, it appears to be approximately a quarter past three in the morning. Theologically, the Lord is all-powerful and we are small and insignificant. Meteorologically, it seems we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What's it tell you, Tonto?"

"A writer for the New York Times called the student-designed and built structures at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture perhaps 'the hippest dormitory in the world. 'The "shelters,' as they are called, dot the natural landscape surrounding the campuses (near Scottsdale, Arizona), and are offered to students as options for living while attending school.

"Paul Stankey, along with wife Sara and his brother Paul and wife Krista, constructed their weekend getaway in the Minnesotta woods from 2 small shipping containers ($800 each) and birch wood. Holyoke Cabin was built completely by hand, without electricity, and water was pumped from a creek 1/4 mile away to mix concrete. Paul is co-founder of HIVE Modular, specializing in modern prefab design that is affordable and efficient."
-Photo and text from: http://is.gd/bpZo, which highlights about a dozen shipping container homes (and apartments)
Step-by-step construction photos (November, 2007) at: http://is.gd/bpZWE

"This house is located on an island called Elliðaey near Vestmannaeyjar, a small archipelago off the south coast of Iceland. The house was given to singer, Bjork from her motherland as a “Thank You” for putting Iceland on the international map."http://is.gd/boYt8

In the mid-'70s ("The '60s happened in the '70s," right?), Lesley and I tried to make a go of it producing food for ourselves and to sell. I was building our house. Had no plans to publish more books (after Shelter). Lesley tended a big garden. At one time we had 50 chickens, 5 beehives, and 3-4 goats (on less than ½-acre). Our friends were into the same things. Neighbors Bob and Sabena had a Jersey cow, pigs, a few sheep, ducks, chickens, and a huge garden, about one acre. Mike and I tried some small-scale farming. Mike and I both learned a lot from Arnold Brost, an old German who had grown up in Bessarabia (Romania) on a self-sufficient farm. Tending bees, making wine, smoking hams, making sourdough yeast…

Turns out producing organic food on our small scale in those days just didn't pay. We sold fertile organic eggs for $1 a dozen, a quart of organic raw goat's milk for $1, and honey for $1 a pound. We didn't end up being farmers, but we learned a lot of food skills that still serve us well. Grinding grain (wheat millet, oats, rice) just before using; making cheese; gathering wild foods; all the myriad things Lesley's learned to cook, from fresh-baked bread to pizza to sushi to a —ahem!— chocolate soufflé.

I discovered a homemade book called Stretching in 1979, used it to cure a bad back, and ended up publishing it in 1980, and voilá, I was no longer carpenter/farmer, but publisher. That book changed my life.

Note from todays NY Times:
-Highly efficient waste-to-energy plants in Denmark burn garbage to produce electricity with minimal pollution. U.S. of course drags heels on this technology.
-Reading the hard version of the NY Times is such a treat compared to the dumbed-down San Francisco Chronicle.
-Andrew Russ Sorkin says the bailouts might just be working.
-Pfizer reveals it's been making payments to doctors as consultants or speakers. Why am I not surprised?
-Lala.com is a great music site. Can play any song, many albums free just once.

"Perched atop steel pylons that abstractly emulate natural branches, the project is not literally a tree house but rather a modern interpretation of one. The design pays the ultimate respect to the pre-existing tree, literally shaping itself around the contours of the trunk. Inside, a single glass cut out in the floor reconnects the tree house inhabitant to the tree itself, a respectful and subtle nod to Mother Nature."
Photo (c) Eric Staudenmaier
Design by RBA

I got the idea to do a book on tiny houses about a year ago. After all, the main theme of our 1973 book Shelter was the small house. Instead of borrowing money from a bank to buy an existing house, you'd do it yourself. We showed designs, with drawings by Bob Easton, of five small houses, each with a different roof shape.

This idea has really taken off in the last few years. There's a ton of material out there on tiny houses. So I began exploring the web and copying down URLs of websites with good material. I did this on and off for about a year, while we finished up other projects.

In December, 2009, I started a review of all these websites and all this material. Which I've just finished. I have about 100 folders assembled here: tiny houses on land, on wheels, on the water; cabins, shacks, sheds; saunas, studios, greenhouses, chicken coops;. Small living — urban or country. A ton of wonderful material.

Next week I'll start contacting these people. I'll be seeking permission to use photos and stories. We can't pay much, if anything for photos, since our books have 1000-1200 photos each. And, as is usual, I have no idea what the book will be like. My method is to start assembling pages and let the book take on its own form. So here goes, our first major building book since Builders of the Pacific Coast.

Above: my photo of cabin by Vin Gorman (one of the featured builders in the above book).

Left: Jennifer Acosta and her sons, Derek, 12, and JanPaul, 5, live in an apartment in a house that she bought with a sister and a brother and their families.
-Photo by Uli Seit
This story in the NY Times (4/07/10), by Constance Rosenblum, about two sisters and a brother, each with their own families, buying and sharing a 3-story house in Queens, N.Y.:
"… for these three grown children, Ecuadorean immigrants raised largely in a one-bedroom apartment near Fordham Road in the Bronx, the arrangement offered an escape from cramped quarters in a troubled part of the city.
The three had long talked about buying a place together. Yet only when they discovered this century-old house opposite Forest Park seven years ago did they realize they had found something both large enough for them all and priced at a level they could afford.
'We’d been looking for a year,” Ms. Acosta said. “The day we saw this house, we had already seen seven other places. This was the last one.'
They bought the house for $400,000, dividing the down payment equally among the three families. And the sharing continues. On the 15th of each month Ms. Andrade takes a check for the mortgage to the bank. Mr. Garcia makes sure the taxes are paid. Ms. Acosta administers to the sometimes temperamental boiler, a task she is proud to say she mastered on her own.…"http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/realestate/11habi.html?hpw

Article by Penelope Green in NewYork Times
Published: April 7, 2010
Photo: Robert Rausch
"Like a medieval village, Butch Anthony’s 80-acre family compound is a self-contained universe, and every inch of it is an expression of his prodigious creative spirit.…"
Re. above photo: "He began building his log cabin (in Seale, Alabama), in 1988 and is still tweaking it. It is made from heart pine salvaged from an old mill in Columbus, Ga., and put together with the help of his home-made rigging — cables and pulleys strung from the branches of pine trees. Mr. Anthony made the chandeliers on a screened porch from twigs and cow bones; the 1930s quilts came from his Possum Trot auction."http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/garden/08doonanny.html-Sent us by Tracey Quigley

In December I mentioned that the cafe/coffee roastery at Small World Coffee in Princeton, NJ, did a name and logo for a new blend based on my surfing and skateboarding and I guess, long hair — calling it the Crispy Hippie roast. To tell the truth, I've never thought of myself as a hippie, although I guess I am compared to all my friends from high school and college who didn't smoke dope, get immersed in rock and roll, and drop out (back in '65). "I'm proud to be a hippie from Olema…" Small World owner Jessica Durrie just sent me this t-shirt.

From Instructables. com:
"For each screw drive type, from ancient Slot through to space-age Lox we present a quick view of the screw head, the drive name, a picture of the appropriate drive bit, followed by an explanation of the type. Also presented are the advantages and disadvantages of each drive type. Slot type are also included because that is where the screw began and a double slot becomes a cross drive, and the Robertson or square drive enter the story with recent combined Phillips/Square drives. The Allan, Spline, Torx etc drives are not included and maybe neither should the Uni-Screw, it is just so darn new and interesting.…"
Chart here: http://is.gd/ba8t0
Explanation here: http://is.gd/ba8rX

I'm in Berkeley now, just after 7 AM, at a cafe on Shattuck. I'm so excited to get into a real city; my brain goes into overdrive. Here are some rambling caffeinated thoughts:
This article in the NY Times April 5th is on a series of animal studies that find they are more and more like humans the more research that's done. The article is by Natalie Angier, a wonderful writer.
"…the burgeoning field of animal personality research, the effort to understand why individual members of the same species can be so mulishly themselves, and so unlike one another on a wide variety of behavioral measures. Scientists studying animals from virtually every niche of the bestial kingdom have found evidence of distinctive personalities — bundled sets of behaviors, quirks, preferences and pet peeves that remain stable over time and across settings. They have found stylistic diversity in chimpanzees, monkeys, barnacle geese, farm minks, blue tits and great tits, bighorn sheep, dumpling squid, pumpkinseed sunfish, zebra finches, spotted hyenas, even spiders and water striders, to name but a few. They have identified hotheads and tiptoers, schmoozers and loners, divas, dullards and fearless explorers, and they have learned that animals, like us, often cling to the same personality for the bulk of their lives. The daredevil chicken of today is the one out crossing the road tomorrow.…"
Researchers "…sought to learn why when certain barnacle geese would start moving, others would honkily follow."http://is.gd/bhaBz
***
I got out of shape over the last few years. With a knee injury and operation, carpal tunnel surgery, and at the same time, fascination with my work and the world, I wasn't getting out on the trails and in the water. Now I'm running again, 3 times a week and trying to paddle or surf once or twice a week. Everything in my world goes better when I'm take the time to move through space by my own propulsion. I run on most Saturdays now with a group of very fast mountain runners. Although I'm the slowest, I follow them on harder and longer runs than I'd ever do alone. Saturday we ran about 10 miles and visited a rushing cascading waterfall in the woods.
***
Our new revised 30th anniversary edition of Stretching has sold out its 1st 20,000-copy printing and we're reprinting right now.
***Three digital items I am crazy about:
1. My MacBook Pro 13" laptop is a joy. Apple continually refines. I don't miss the 15"'s larger screen at all (keyboard is same size), and it's small and sleek and works slickly and is easier to carry around.
2. My Canon PowerShot S-90 point-and-shoot camera. I like it way better than my previous G-10. Right now I'm using it for 90% of my shots. I have a new Panasonic Lumix G-1 for more serious stuff. Reviews here.

3. The GoPro’s HD Helmet HERO: a wearable 1080p HD video and still photo camera. Tiny camera you mount on head or chest to film surfing, snowboarding, skateboarding, running. Incredible little camera for action. "Professional quality 1080p / 960p / 720p HD resolutions record at 30 and 60 frames per second (60 fps in 720p). Record up to 2.5 hours on a single charge and up to 9 hours total on a 32GB SD card (not included)." Here.
***
Time to get to work…

Although I'm immersed in our forthcoming book on tiny houses (under 500 sq. ft.), this home, with curved roof and nestled into the slope (overlooking a pond) looks appealing. Designed by Smith and Vansant Architects of Norwich, Vermont.
Details and more photos of above house at: http://is.gd/ba6Xh

Lew just discovered an interesting website called Goodreads, with reader book ratings and reviews; it's tied in to Facebook. For one thing, it's a way to cross-check Amazon customer reviews. Here's a comment on our last major building book, Builders of the Pacific Coast:

"In a time when more people are thinking "green" and "sustainable," this book is even more fascinating. "Sustainable" is not a slick, well-marketed, over-packaged solution you can buy at a local big box store and get delivered - it is noticing and respecting the woodgrain, the type of stone, and the stories of the place. There is so much room for quiet reflection in this book, it took much longer to read it than I expected from a large format, photo-heavy "coffee table" book."
-Jess
-http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1661976.Builders_of_the_Pacific_Coast

20-foot-wide rustic owner-built home on remote Prince of Wales island in Southeast Alaska. The nearest town is Coffman Cove (about 50 air miles from Ketchican). I like the design, 1-½-stories, big 2nd-story dormers, big covered porch for taking off wet and muddy gear in winter, sitting around or sleeping on in summer (with mosquito nets). This and other practical small house designs are at: http://www.countryplans.com/

No sooner do I exult about Spring and sunshine and blue skies and green grass than Winter kicks back in. Tuesday night Eric and I headed south, running along the coast from Muir Beach, up trails leading to ocean lookout spots. We could see bands of rain out on the horizon, moving in from the ocean. It started drizzling and suddenly got a lot colder and just as we got to the top (maybe 1000 ft. above the ocean) and started heading back, it started hailing. No trees for shelter. So here we are running down a fire road, high winds, getting pelted by hail, freezing water running down our legs into shoes…It may sound like I'm complaining here, but in reality, the discomfort was worth it when we got into dry clothes and in to the pub, and beer and hot shepherd's pie. It was an adventure! "If it doesn't kill you, it's good for you," invariably true.

The rain (1" this week) and new storms next week are good. Our local lakes are full, but Lake Shasta can use as much rainfall as it can get.

Then yesterday I ran down to the beach and found a bunch of new graffiti. I love this art form.